Mormonism

Mormonism was founded in the 1830’s and 1840’s by Joseph Smith, a notorious
swindler from upstate New York, a 33rd degree Freemason, and practicer of a kind of magic
resembling that found in the Jewish Talmud. He began the new religion through the revelation of
some gold tablets engraved with symbols purported to be the long lost hieroglyphic text of the
Bible or rather the Book of Mormon by the angel Moroni, found by him in a hill some years
before, which Smith then translated into English with the aid of special ‘translating
spectacles’ and published. Although he and his original associates admitted to their family
members and friends, as the family later testified, that it was a hoax designed to secure a good
amount of money and other benefits from the foolish, nevertheless many were taken in by the
Moronic book of Mormon. Smith then took up the mantle of a prophet sent from God to reform
Christianity to its lost purity and, after gathering a large following, he moved to Nauvoo,
Illinois, in 1830, where he revealed God wished to establish the 3rd Temple, which soon began
construction, replete with Masonic motifs.

In Nauvoo, he issued a further revelation from God called The Book of the Commandments,
which he revised heavily several times over the next few years, followed later by Doctrines
and Covenants, which superseded the former revelations. The chief cause of the revisions
seems to be the need to cover newly-revealed doctrines and privileges of the prophet and his
chief assistants, and the intellectual origin of the new teachings seems to have been the
successive arrivals of an American Jewish Mason friend (J. C. Bennett) and a Polish Jewish master
of Kabbalah living in England (Alexander Neibaur). The former, Mr. Bennett, helped Smith
establish the secret Temple rites of Mormonism, which both admitted were a modified form of
Freemasonry, as well as the polygamous rites of Mormonism, based on Egyptian rite Freemasonry,
and which gave ‘divine’ sanction to Smith’s scandalous sexual profligacy. The
latter, Mr. Neibaur, a master of six languages and the possessor of a vast Kabbalah library,
tutored Smith in Hebrew and German and taught him the Zohar (one of the chief books of the Jewish
Kabbalah). Smith then propounded from the Zohar the doctrine of polytheism, the original divinity
of man, and the ability of man to return to his divine estate through specific ritual (magic)
practices (e.g., see Smiths’ King Folliet Discourse). He also received support from Neibaur
and the Zohar in propounding his doctrine that without sexual union and propagation man cannot be
‘saved’ (which in the Mormon conception of salvation means becoming god of your own
planet along with a harem of divine wives and concubines, as supposedly the first man became God
the Father and rules this planet with his wives). Lastly, he taught that Satan was the divine
twin brother of Jesus, and many other such blasphemies. In consequence of his criminal
promiscuity and corruption of local women, and some say in consequence of revealing Masonic
secrets, Joseph Smith was imprisoned in the local jail, and an angry crowd of offended fathers
and husbands stormed the jail and slew him.

At this point, the movement split. Some remained in Nauvoo, obedient to the revelation of the
‘Prophet’, to build the 3rd Temple, while most followed Brigham Young who lead the
Mormons west in search of a land where they could practice Mormonism free of civil persecution,
ultimately settling in Utah, which was accepted as a new Promised Land with a new Temple. When in
1850, Utah was given the choice of war (because Mormons had slaughtered some U.S. pioneer
families) or inclusion as a territory in the United States, the Mormon council received a
revelation that certain aspects of Mormonism that conflicted with United States law, such as
polygamy, no longer were lawful, and they entered the Union, becoming a state in 1896. However,
some Mormons still practice this as a divinely-revealed precept, in spite of U.S. civil law.
Today, Mormon doctrine continues further revelatory development under the rule of Smith’s
successor ‘prophets’ and ‘apostles’ in a governing council.